While Chrome OS users are able to connect their android phones to their computers to text and use their phone as an automatic wi-fi hotspot, it’s been lacking in certain features. Compared to the Windows 10 Your Phone app, it doesn’t integrate as deeply with your phone with features like managing photos and play music. Some Samsung phones can cross-device copy/paste and allow you to view your device’s screen on your PC. My Samsung Galaxy Note 9 does this seamlessly.
But 9to5Google reports that Chrome OS might be getting an Android Phone Hub — a beefed-up version of what they already offer, with features very similar to the Windows 10 Your Phone app. A code change seems to point to this with a reference to a new ‘phone hub.’
Enable Phone Hub
Provides a UI for users to view information about their Android phone and perform phone-side actions within Chrome OS.
#enable-phone-hub
Digging deeper, this code change also references new notifications, a notifications badge, and task continuation. Like Windows 10 Your Phone, it seems like you’ll be able to manage your phone’s notifications from Chrome OS, and might receive an alert on your computer screen every time someone texts you, messages you on Facebook, or anything similar. With Windows 10 Your Phone, you can select which apps you want to notify you on your PC. It’s not clear where the notifications badge will appear on Chrome OS, though.
As for task continuation, this could allow Chrome OS and Android to start a task on one device and then pick up where they left off on the other. Users already have the ability to do this with things like Google Docs, but since this Phone Hub will reportedly focus on better integration between Chrome OS and Android, I image something like starting a text on your phone, then finishing it and sending it on your computer is not out of the realm of possibilities. (You can’t do that on Windows 10 Your Phone.)
This is obviously not something Google has confirmed or even mentioned. However, Google already lets you share web pages between the Chrome browser on your PC and Android device, and vice versa, so it would be nice to have more integrated features that work like Windows 10 Your App. As 9to5Google points out, it is strange that Google is behind on this compared to Windows, but hopefully, it will catch up soon.